Friday, April 19, 2013

Are these the streets of a U.S. city?

Except for the words "Boston Police" on the vehicle, the image -- see here (there's a 14-second ad first) -- looks more like something from the streets of a war zone (think Baghdad, Belfast, or Sarajevo during the relevant times). Hard to believe the quarry is one 19-year-old, no matter how armed, dangerous, and apparently depraved.

5 comments:

A guy at work was telling of his daughter who is alone in her house in the area where no one is allowed out. she calls evey few hours.

Some other time I will launch a rant on the 180 degree change in police tactics in the past 40 years. In the 1960's neighborhoods burned down because the police had or very little training in a tactical situation to now where they go tactical for a jay walker.

Boston was turned into a prison to catch a 19 year old who killed three people. Lets put this in perspective: every year an average of 115 people are murdered in the Boston Metro. [3] That is roughly one murder every three days. Living in Boston's lower income "ghettos" I was acutely aware of this fact. I befriended many people whose friends and family members were the victims of gang warfare. Their deaths brought no manhunts.

Acts of terrorism are different from normal homicides, and they should not be treated as such. Justice must be mete out. But the fearful and extreme response of the American government and her people are disgraceful, fit for a nation of sheep, not citizens. Again, I implore my fellow countrymen to see things in proper perspective. India and Great Britain have shown how great power democracies can weather protracted terrorist campaigns without curtailing civil liberties or searching homes with heavily armed troops. Between 1970 and 1999 the Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated over forty bombs in the city of London alone. Since 2000 Islamic terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and the Indian Mujahadeen have staged more than 30 different attacks in India since the 1990s. The most recent, a motorcycle bombing in Bangalore, happened two days ago. Great Britain survived the IRA. India thrives despite her home-grown Jihadists. Neither nation resorted to urban lock downs or paramilitary man hunts to do so.

It is astonishing how normalized this kind of response to terrorism has become. I did not know that domestic police departments had those kind of vehicles. It is perturbing.

Yes, it's perturbing. Good to be reminded of the British and Indian examples. (Though the Indian govt has taken a more thoroughly militarized approach to the Naxalites; not quite comparable, admittedly.)

At the same time I do sympathize to an extent w the governor of Massachusetts, city officials, the police, and others who had to make decisions v. quickly -- and thanks partly or largely to the amateurishness of the suspects, the lockdown didn't last that long.